Conventional golf bags have historically provided golfers with a suitable apparatus for storing and transporting golf clubs both during play and thereafter. However, because the club heads are often exposed and/or protrude from the top of most such golf clubs, such bags are inherently deficient in their ability to protect the golf club from structural damage via forceful impact and/or collision of the clubs with one another, or with external surfaces during transport of the clubs and golf bag in a golf cart, within the trunk of vehicle, or the cargo/luggage storage bay of an aircraft. Such forceful impact to the golf clubs may impart significant axial damage to club shaft, and structural damage to the golf head. Moreover, because many such golf bags employ tubular slots or housings for each club, clubs placed therein are subject to jostling and movement therein during transport of the bag, thereby causing facial or surface damage to the club shaft (especially easily scratched graphite shafts), or result in the club sliding out therefrom during transport of the bag in a vehicle or the like, and thus, subsequent damage thereto.
Although both soft and hard case protective golf bag covers that fully enclosed the golf bag are available, such covers do not preclude potentially destructive movement or jostling of the clubs carried within the tubular housings of the golf bag, or the harmful striking of the club heads against one another. As such, the clubs may still slidable move within the tubular housings, thereby resulting in surface damage to the shaft. Moreover, should a soft cover be selected, axial damage to the club shafts is still a possibility.
In an effort to reduce harmful striking, impact and/or contact of the club heads with one another, and to protect the club heads from unexpected harsh elements of weather, many golfers utilize padded club head covers that individually engage and cover each golf club head. Although effective in deterring harmful scathing or contact between the club heads, such head covers still do not preclude the potential of axial damage to the club shaft via external impacting forces.
Still another deficiency associated with conventional golf bags is the poor presentation, removability and accessibility of the clubs, thereby often contributing or lending to structural and facial damage to the golf club shafts. Specifically, because most golf bags utilize long, tubular slots to house each club, and because most such slots are arranged within a generally circular configuration due to the generally cylindrical structure or shape of the golf bag, golfers must remove a club from the bag by drawing the shaft up through the tubular slot. However, due to the average length of such clubs, and the typical reach or upward arm's length stretch of the average adult golfer, removal of the club in such a manner often results in the club being drawn or pulled from the tubular slot at an angle (i.e., as opposed to directly upward), and therefore, imparts an undesirable yield stress on the shaft as the shaft is pulled up through and against the tubular housing. Such removal also causes facial or surface damage to the club shaft. Replacement of the golf club within such tubular slots is conducted in a similar manner, angle and motion, wherein most such golfers typically release the club when recessed within tubular slot sufficient distance, letting it forcefully drop therewithin, or, alternatively, forcefully thrust the club back into the tubular housing, thereby further subjecting the club shaft to undesirable yield stress and axial force.
Therefore, it is readily apparent that there is a need for an improved golf bag that replaces conventional apparatuses and methods of golf club storage, transportation, and retrieval by advantageously eliminating conventional use of tubular housings or slots to retain and store clubs during transport, thereby preventing the harmful jostling and contact amongst same, and wherein a plurality of tiered racks adapted to receive and maintain stationary placement of a plurality of golf clubs therein provide convenient frontal accessibility to the golf clubs, yet protect the golf club heads from harmful scathing or contact between one another. There is still a further need for an improved golf bag that protects the golf shaft from undesirable yield stress during removal of the club from the bag, from external forces that may impart undesirable axial stress on the golf shaft, and from the harsh elements of weather or other external forces that damage otherwise exposed golf club heads. There is yet still a further need for an integrated or combined golf club storage and transportation device.